The Folly of Human Conceits
by StarzAngelus
Summary: Time is fleeting, Jane knows, and yet the stars will continue to shine.


**A/N: **_Oh god, I did the thing. I was super terrified of writing Lokane but I did it anyway because there is always a need for more Lokane fic. Please forgive the grammar mistakes for this is un-betaed. I just hope the characters have remained true… Please enjoy!_

* * *

She is eight when Uncle Erik presents her with her first astrolabe. It is larger than the palm of her hand and an odd color that she can't decide is really old gold or just bronze.

"Robert told me that you really enjoy learning about space," Erik says, twisting the dial awkwardly. It points to the constellation Aries. "This will help you locate the positions of planets, stars—"

"I know what it is," Jane says, plucking it from his hands. "It was also used for navigation and to measure altitude."

Erik blinks. "Y-yes. It has many purposes."

Uncle Erik is uncharacteristically quiet and Jane thinks that he has more to say but won't. He is dressed in dark slacks and a black shirt, silken purple tie shining elegantly in the sunlight seeping through the dining room windows. The guests have departed and Jane wants nothing more than to remove her own black dress that has become itchy and constricting. She doesn't understand why black has to be the color of mourning when her mother's favorite color had been _red_ and as they had lowered her into the ground that morning, Jane placed a rose the color of blood on her casket.

"Jane?" Erik asks, and again his tone is soft and restrained. "Would you like to hear a story?"

Jane nods because Uncle Erik tells lovely stories whenever he visits and his voice is accented and pleasant and sometimes she wishes that he would read to her every night before she went to bed.

(Her mother had been in hospitals as far as she could remember and Jane would read stories to _her._)

Erik leaves the room for a moment and returns with a leather satchel, setting it on the table and rifling through paper and books until his hand settles on one that is damaged at the edges and faded to the color of olives. _Norse Mythology_, the title reads and Jane is only a little disappointed because she prefers Roman, but Jane loves to learn and Uncle Erik has never let her down before.

Jane listens with rapt attention and laughs at the silly sounding names and interrupts Erik constantly, asking why they would choose ravens as messengers when peregrines are much faster, and how could the different worlds be connected through a tree? Wouldn't we be able to see the branches?

Erik politely answers her questions or tells her that he will demonstrate what the book means later and then he is reading about the trials and tribulations of the gods when Jane interrupts again.

"The gods are really stupid," she says, with the open wonder of a child. "They fight over such dumb things and like to cause trouble for no reason at all." She points to a rather graphic depiction of a red-haired god chained gruesomely under a serpent. "Especially _that _one."

"Ah," Erik replies, pursing dried lips and then smiling. "Well, he is the God of Mischief."

Jane frowns because it is such a pointless gift to possess—_mischief_—when there are other more interesting qualities like flying and teleportation or mind-reading that one could have.

"I don't like him," Jane decides, flipping the page for Erik. "Keep reading," she commands, and he does.

That night Jane dreams of flying through tunnels that look like branches and at the end is a star that shines like Neptune and as she gets closer, the tunnel begins to freeze and suddenly she remembers that ice giants have too hostile an environment for humans to visit and instead turns at the last second to continue on another path. Perhaps there is a nebula nearby (though she knows there isn't).

The next morning as Uncle Erik leaves, she tells him that she will be an astronaut when she grows up and he smiles.

* * *

Jane is twelve when she moves in with Uncle Erik and his ex-wife, Martha, in a large, suburban house outside of Pittsburgh. Martha is a trauma surgeon and is rarely in the house, and after fifteen years of peaceful marriage, the Selvigs decided that they were better off friends. Jane finds this baffling but the situation works and as she works diligently on her advanced trigonometry homework in the living room, Erik unlocks the front door and walks in quietly.

"How was your day?" he asks merrily. There is a proud smile on his face.

"The same," Jane replies. She rubs an equation away with her eraser and writes down another. "Better, I suppose."

"It will get easier," Erik says, sitting down next to her on the couch. "Public school is different—especially here in America—but it is a wonderful way to make friends." He pauses and tilts his head thoughtfully. "But I suppose nothing really beats the freedom of homeschooling, right?" He laughs and it is loud and happy and even Jane can't help but smile.

"It is very different," she agrees. Her brow furrows in the way she knows makes her look older. "It's the age difference that is… problematic. I'm already shorter than average and I take classes with juniors. But…" she trails off, waving her hand around fruitlessly.

"But what?"

"I don't know. I guess I thought it would be worse. Not that I wanted it to be!" she says, noting the hint of alarm on Erik's face. "In the movies they always show the nerds and geeks being picked on and besides the weird looks in the hallways between classes, everyone is actually civil. I think that being only in advanced classes also helps. Everyone is too busy with school work to care."

Erik only nods and for several long moments there is nothing but silence and Jane would revel in it if she didn't know the true meanings behind her new guardian's habits and mannerisms.

"You know, Jane," he begins and Jane sets her pencil down in her book and closes it softly. "If you ever want to talk about anything, anything at all, I am here to listen." He places his much larger hand that has begun to wrinkle on top of hers and squeezes gently. "Your father was like a brother to me, and you were like a daughter. I am so very proud of you and I wish that I was able to give you the life that you deserve but I am afraid that I can only give you what I am able."

"I know, Uncle Erik," Jane says, blinking away the moisture that has begun to gather at the corner of her eyes.

She is abruptly struck by the many lines around his eyes, and the tiredness that seeps through his voice and his movements when he comes home from teaching at the university. Erik is aging and she wonders when she will reach this moment in her life, too. There is so much that she wants to know and so much that she think she may never learn and the thought frightens her. She wants to tell him that as much as she tells herself that the dynamics at school don't bother her that they actually _do_, and she can't find the strength the admit that as she walks by herself down the halls, clutching her books against her flat chest, she wants to be older, wants to be like everyone else, wants to have the maturity of an adult…

But time is fleeting and there is only so much knowledge that can fit inside her seemingly infinite mind and suddenly it doesn't matter that she is younger than the others because she is still _smarter_ and will probably always know more than any and all of them… put together.

Erik leaves her after a few more small exchanges of conversation and then Jane is left alone, like she enjoys, basking in the new knowledge that she is winning a race that no one knows they are a part of.

* * *

"How'd you get inside that cloud?"

Jane is twenty-eight and watches a man the size of a small car shovel food into his mouth and even though she is pretty sure he may be crazy, he holds answers that she desperately seeks and she isn't leaving him until he gives them to her.

Erik is watching him as if he were insane (he quite possibly may be) and Darcy looks as if she can't decide whether he is interesting enough to post about on her Facebook (Jane knows that look and it really isn't helping).

The strange man is then smashing a coffee mug on the floor and then she is on her feet, reprimanding him for such a useless display of violence. He laughs it off and it irritates her because it feels as if she is part of a joke she isn't privy to and she wants to say more—a clever remark about manners or prod him once again about the _event_—when some patrons behind them comment about a satellite crash nearby. Everything then becomes a blur and the big (though _very_ handsome) man is leaving the establishment without a word, and worse, without giving her answers.

She catches up to him in the middle of the street (does he have a death wish?) and though he is seducing her with his words and promises, Erik convinces her that quite possibly the man is delusional and then he is walking away and she can't decide if the tug in her stomach is from the lingering feeling of his lips on her hand or from the knowledge she may never see again (it's both).

She finds him again after the agents in their crisp, black suits take her life's work away and though she knows that Erik will be terribly angry, she takes the man (Thor, he says his name is Thor) to what he seeks because it will prove what _she_ seeks. His eyes crinkle at the edges and his smile lights up the entire room like the Fourth of July and she forgets that the clothes that he wears now belong to her ex and that perhaps the perfect fit isn't a bad sign at all.

'Thor' doesn't return until late in the night with Erik flopped precariously over his shoulder and they spend the next several hours under the stars discussing magic and science and it is everything that Jane could have ever hoped for as his gentle words flow through her like the milky tendrils of the galaxy, smooth and wonderful, and she can't look away from his beautiful face, lit by the firelight, regal and kindly. Jane thinks she could stay like this forever and if what he says is true, then maybe he can take her with him.

The next day he leaves with a promise to return, the memory of a desperate kiss in her chest, and she curses whatever deity has taken him away in a dark cloud that fills up the heavens for hours after his departure.

He doesn't come back to her, not the first time. But she forgives him when he comes the second. And the third.

He is, after all, a benevolent _god_.

* * *

She is thirty-four and the fiancée of the true heir of Asgard and as Jane walks slowly down the throne room, ruffled blue skirts tangling around her ankles, she sees the king lounging lazily on the throne, observing her from afar.

"Do you sleep well, child?" he asks, putting the appropriate amount of concern in his voice. "I fear the halls provide very little company."

"Yes," she replies truthfully, stopping at the base of the dais. She looks straight into his glittering eye, jaw rigid. "I wonder, my _King_," and she makes sure to put enough loathing into the word as she can, "if it is _you _who does not sleep well."

"I sleep well enough," he snaps, sitting straighter on the throne. His fingers flex around Gungnir.

Jane hesitates for only a moment and she sucks in a lungful of air. "Thor told me what you said, before he returned to Earth. He said they were the best words his father had ever given him and that he was very proud to be his son."

"Did he, now?" The King remains stoic and placid.

"That is what he said." Jane purses her lips, looking down at the floor. Slowly, she raises her eyes and pins them on the King. "I always found it rather odd, you see, considering your treatment of him—and of me—before. I thought perhaps the death of your wife had brought a change upon the King of Asgard… and then I thought again." She looks at him expectantly. "It amazes me that no one else has caught on, not even Thor or the Einherjar or the Warriors Three, and yet to me it is as blatant as the daylight."

"You were always very clever, Jane Foster of Midgard," the King replies, and he rises from his seat.

"I know," Jane says, trying to stifle the fast beating of her heart. "It is both a gift and a curse."

"Indeed." He now stands in front of her, one step above, and then his form shimmers, gold rays of light going in all directions until a tall, much younger man stands in place of the King. "I have always considered it more of a gift."

Jane knows who is standing in front of her—has known for years—and yet still she cannot hold back the gasp that escapes her trembling lips as he grins down at her mischievously. He looks rather the same as the first time she saw him up-close, hair shorter than how it had been when he attacked her world yet longer than how it is portrayed in his royal portrait. He does not appear as gaunt or deathly as the day Thor removed him from the dungeons but he is still as pale and handsome as ever, dark hair contrasting sharply against his skin.

"Loki," she breathes and his grin turns wider.

"Jane," Loki replies, saying her name like a caress. "It has been a long time, has it not? A few hours, I should think. Tell me, since unfortunately I have never had the _pleasure_ to have a basis for comparison: what is it like to now be immortal?"

She blinks, chest fluttering nervously, and the room feels colder. Jane unconsciously rubs her hands up and down her arms and thinks about the ceremony made in her honor earlier that evening, the taste of Idunn's apple going down her throat, and she frowns. "I don't feel any different." She really doesn't.

He glowers down at her, as if unsatisfied with her answer. "Really?" he asks, eyebrow raised sardonically.

"Yes, really," she replies, now angry.

The truth is a bitter pill to swallow and it was that whatever had been done to her when she had been possessed by the Aether had in fact fundamentally changed her DNA, and it was entirely possible that her life would have been prolonged without the help of a golden apple at all. It had taken a few months to figure out, but after a casual check-up, a visit from both Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, Jane had learned that her sudden new awareness had not been due to the throes of love she had been thrust into now that Thor had decided to stay on Midgard, but that the gamma signature emitted from her blood samples now resembled those that belonged to the universe's most valued (and dangerous) relics.

"_You glow like the Tesseract," _Stark had said in a poor attempt at humor.

Dr. Banner had merely looked at her sadly and that was when Thor decided to go back to Asgard, because if anyone knew what was happening to Jane, it would be the All-Father.

He hadn't known. And now Jane wonders if it were true.

"Do you know what's wrong with me?" she asks, ignoring his previous question.

"No," Loki replies, and she knows it is the truth. "No one truly understands the Aether. My fool of a father made sure of that."

"Where is he?" Jane asks, genuinely curious. She doesn't know how—it might be because of whatever she is now—but she knows that the All-Father is still alive.

"Somewhere far away where the thumb of his rule will never cloud the realms again."

Jane nods and the guilt that she had harbored for many months after the discovery of Loki's deception courses into her chest and she stamps it away harshly. Whatever Loki may be, he has shown to be a particularly adept ruler, maintaining peace between previously belligerent realms, and keeping Thor by his side constantly. Thor once told her that Loki had never wanted to be King and though she had scoffed at the notion before, it is noticeable in the "King's" subtle attempts to get Thor to renege his decision on abdicating the throne of Asgard.

"What is it you seek, Jane?" Loki asks, and his cold, green eyes bore into her like ice.

Somewhere between the harsh cliffs of Svartalfheim and the rousing cheers of her ceremony, Jane had realized that one day, Thor would be King of the Nine Realms, a title bestowed upon him by his father, his brother, and perhaps fate. Jane knows that Thor will be the greatest King of any world, of any time, and that as his betrothed, she will be at his side, providing counsel and one day, heirs.

Jane also knows that with the newly constructed bifrost on Earth and on surrounding realms who had lacked it before, she will be granted passage through any of the worlds any time she pleases.

But as Queen, it doesn't mean that she _should_.

Loki has not moved, expression no longer cruel but curious, and it is the trait that has gotten him more than she could possibly imagine, answers to questions she has never even thought of, glimpses of worlds that her once mortal mind could never even fathom. It is the flame of jealousy that spurs her forward and she takes the final step, standing chest-to-chest with the God of Lies.

"I want see everything. I want to know everything." She closes her eyes, feeling the excitement burst through her bones. "I want everything that Yggdrasil has to offer."

She doesn't see his smirk of triumph.

He doesn't see hers as she walks away.

* * *

Jane is two hundred and eighty-two years old, lying in the softest sheets that the inn on the backwater planet on the outer rim of an obscure galaxy in the constellation Leo has to offer, and a strong arm snakes around her waist and she sighs serenely.

She turns toward him, breathing in the musky scent of his neck and then nuzzles it. She feels him smile contentedly.

"Do you ever regret it?" he asks casually.

"Do you?" she counters back. Both of them know of what the other speaks.

"No," he replies, resolutely. Jane knows that though he always tells the truth to her, he still manages to hide so much. Somehow, she seems to be the only one who can unravel his hidden truths, albeit very slowly.

"I don't either," Jane says, and she doesn't. It has been centuries since she has felt the agonizing stab of regret, and even then, it had never been because of this.

"He still looks for you." He fails miserably at keeping the spite out of his tone.

"And you."

He is on his back, naked from the waist up, and he stares blankly at the ceiling. He doesn't have to make a single gesture to know that he agrees.

"He'll forgive you," Jane says, curling her form closer to his. His hand reaches out and settles on her swollen stomach, grazing it with tender fingers.

"It's a boy."

"I know."

He raises an inquiring eyebrow. "You've visited the healers?"

Jane places her hand over his. "You're not the only one with gifts, Loki."

"Is that so?" And he presses his lips on her forehead.

"Mhmm," Jane replies, placing her head on his chest. "Given time, I'll probably better at magic than _you_. Remember when we discovered the triple-horned cicada on Preorius 5 and we had to jump through the—"

Loki silences her with a kiss.

The next day, they observe a collapsing star turn into black hole just outside the boundary of the event horizon.

As Jane weeps, Loki holds her gently in his arms.

* * *

Millions of light years away, on the gleaming floor of the bifrost bridge, Thor looks into the heavens and smiles.


End file.
